Window to the Soul

Me:  "Sir, on a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain and ten being the worse pain imaginable, where is your pain today?"

Elderly Black Gentleman:  "It be in my eyes."

You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You Is Important

I just finished watching The Help for the second time.  I saw it last year in Iowa and again tonight.  I taped it on the DVR to watch with a friend who came to eat chili rellenos and homemade pico de gallo and relax in front of the television.

As we watched the beer-swigging Hilly swerving down the gravel road toward Skeeter's house after reading the book and revealing her secret, I jokingly told my friend, "That's how it's gonna be when my book comes out about the hospital".  And we laughed.

Just now, after my friend went home I got out my notebook to journal a while and began to think about what I had said.   I wondered what is it I really want to say.  Here and in a book.  And I decided this.

I want to tell our side.  My side.  What I and we are expected to smile through and not let common sense contaminate.  Electronic charting and demanding patients in an ego-centered society and the crabs in a barrel syndrome with other nurses.  All of it.  I need to tell what kind of insanity exists in this profession, what I've seen that the rest of the world doesn't know, nor may believe exists.  It's hard to believe.  I know.  I have trouble believing it, too.  That's what I want to say.  Because saying it  makes me feel a little less insane.

But it's not just that, not just the hospital and the pressures and stressors of that.  You and I know it's also about menopause and about having had enough water pass under the bridge to no longer be able to smile and nod and to even care a lot of the time.  It's all of that, too.

I found an old pay stub the other day from 2009 that I'd stuck in a book to mark my place.  I was working where I do now, in the very same department and as full-time status.  I'm making exactly $0.16 more today than I was then.  Three years ago.

My boss came out to the nurse's desk the other day and we were slow and we all started talking about something. There were three of us.  And I said to him, and we weren't on the subject of salary, "Let me ask you something.  I'm making sixteen cents an hour more than I was here 3 years ago.  (He wasn't the supervisor then).  Do you think there's something wrong with that?" 

The answer is that there is something wrong with me, that's the answer.  The answer is why am I not enrolled in truck driving school like I dream about all day long?  And before the comments come telling me what a horrible life I'd have driving a truck, let me say that I know all of that.  (Isn't it cute how I pretend there will be comments?)  I've already been told.  By everybody.  But there is something about the prospect of turning in my notice and jumping in a truck and driving for 70 hours a week for a year that is somewhat of a siren song for me and others like me.  I think of it as only a year because I really like to be home too much to do it for the rest of my life.    But God knows I need a break from the ER. 

Like Hilly, I'm tired.  It's hard work eating shit pie for twelve hours a day, three days a week.